I read somewhere in a linguistics book a few years back how the French
a-t-il? construction was observed to be reinterpreted as phonetically /ti:/
and syntactically [question particle], which kind of ties in with the
"should've - should of" debate fiercely raging ;-) elsewhere!
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Peterson" <DigitalScream@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 4:48 AM
Subject: Re: Question about Questions
> In a message dated 9/16/01 2:51:12 PM, cinga@GMX.NET writes:
>
> << That got me wondering what such an interrogative intonation would sound
> like... all languages I've come in contact with so far raise the pitch
> of the voice towards the end of the sentence. Is that some sort of
> global constant of human communication or just another IEism? What
> other ways are there in the langs of the world? >>
>
> I'm fairly sure that Russian doesn't do this. Or wait, it does...
But
> only kind of...?
>
> "Vy govoritye po-ruski?"
>
> What's the stress pattern on that? I'm almost inclined to say that it's
(and
> I hope this comes out correctly):
>
>
> ri-
> Vy go-vo-
>
> tye pa-ruski?
>
> Is this right?
>
> -David